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An anonymous reader writes "A federal jury in Texas has decided against Apple in a patent infringement lawsuit and ordered it to pay $8 million to Personal Audio LLC, a patent licensing company (aka troll). The lawsuit started in 2009. Last year Apple's three fellow defendants (Sirius XM Radio, Coby Electronics and Archos) settled. Apple said the patents were invalid and not infringed. The patent holder demanded $84M and will now get about 10% of that amount. Juries in East Texas frequently rule in favor of patent holders. In the same district court Lodsys has already filed four lawsuits. In one of them it targets seven app developers and Apple has moved to intervene. The first two developers were already given a deadline: they must answer Lodsys's complaint by July 21, unless they request an extension."

The problem with patent trolls is, that they're similar but quite different from internet trolls:

* Internet Trolls: They want your attention, to harass you and that you get angry. They achieve this by posting/writing nonsense, half-truths and lies anywhere into the internet. Solution: Ignore them, they might shout louder, but you can still ignore them.

* Patent Tolls: They want your money. They utilize a broken patent system and the courts. Solution: Burn them with fire. Hint: Ignoring them might result in you getting sued and you might lose everything.

At the notion that you could get a patent on the idea of transferring a playlist from a computer to an MP3 player(ie. a second computer, but smaller...)

M3Us have been around for ages, and playlists generally are really just a special case of programs accepting lists of files as arguments, which is downright ancient. And transferring a set of commands from one computer to a second, more embedded, computer? I'm pretty sure I was FTPing postscript to some HP from back when they knew how to build them proper

Instead of wasting silly amounts of money on licences, legal fees and patent portfolios wouldn't it be more cost effective to lobby the law makers to change patent law to mean software couldn't be patented?

It would only be fiscally responsible of the CEO to do so if they lost more money due to fighting software related patents than they earn by licensing their own software patents. That means the motivation to eliminate software patents is borne entirely by the smaller companies with little to nothing in the way of a software portfolio, everything to lose if they remain intact, and much less money to fight that system with.

FTA "Apple recently paid $2 billion for a collection of 4G wireless networking patents from Canadian telecommunications company Nortel in hopes of gaining a competitive advantage in the smartphone race."

It's not just fighting the patent trolls it's about the other costs as well.

Gigantic cross-licensed patent arsenals certainly do help keep the little people in their place; but there is one additional factor: The patent troll.

Large patent-holders are mostly locked in a cold war with one another, lots of needless expenditure; but relatively little blood most of the time, and they get to be superpowers and crush smaller competitors like insects(or buy them out when the smaller competitor discovers that they have something quite innovative; but would need to license 3,000 patents to make it to market...)

Patent trolls, though, by possessing patents; but never doing anything that could infringe on patents(because their only business is patent trolling) disrupt this cushy equilibrium. They are sort of the non-state suitcase bombers with nothing to lose in the patent wars.

Perversely, if we want meaningful patent reform, it might actually be best to applaud and encourage patent trolling as much as possible. As long as 'defensive' patents build up in the arsenals of incumbents, the incumbents have very limited incentive to change things. The lawyers cost money, sure; but the strategic advantage is worth it. Add enough patent trolls to the mix, though, and they'll have to deal with an enemy who has no interest in cross-licensing and friendship, and who has nothing they can threaten...

Patent trolls, though, by possessing patents; but never doing anything that could infringe on patents(because their only business is patent trolling) disrupt this cushy equilibrium. They are sort of the non-state suitcase bombers with nothing to lose in the patent wars.

Perversely, if we want meaningful patent reform, it might actually be best to applaud and encourage patent trolling as much as possible.

I don't know of any trolls who profess such idealistic motives; but the existence of patent trolls arguably does more to discourage the People Who Matter from supporting patents than just about anything else. Little people who try to actually make things are exactly the sort of suckers you can crush with your patent arsenal, and other titans tend to settle down into a relatively polite cross-license stalemate. Trolls are the freelance suitcase bomber extortionists of the patent world.

Unless said company holds lots of patents or after taking a patent blow is in a field that can begin developing/buying patents itself.

I find it easiest to think of patents as the nuclear weapons of the business world. Sure, we would likely be better off if we lived in a world where the thought of needing them never came up. A lot of companies and people may wish them all gone. But the patent system is too useful to completely reform for the big players, but just broken enough to encourage non-aggression

You mean to just let anyone compete against you without being able to intimidate and/or sue them in to submission? Hell no!
These trolls are but a minor irritation considering the huge barrier to entry patents provide.

Instead of wasting silly amounts of money on licences, legal fees and patent portfolios wouldn't it be more cost effective to lobby the law makers to change patent law to mean software couldn't be patented?

Instead of wasting silly amounts of money on licences, legal fees and patent portfolios wouldn't it be more cost effective to lobby the law makers to change patent law to mean software couldn't be patented?

To avoid the jurisdiction of unfriendly district courts in Texas, would it be enough not to allow products to be shipped to Texas?

No. Patent cases are Federal cases and it does not matter much in picking a specific Federal court venue whether a defendant that does business globally and is based in the US has any operations in a particular district. A plaintiff can justify the venue based on their convenience and the expertise of the court, since a company like Apple isn't really hampered by having to get lawyers to someplace like Lufkin TX to argue a case. For matters of clear Federal jurisdiction (i.e. not issues like state and l

My idea was not to do business in any jurisdiction whose "juries tend to automatically side with plaintiffs in patent suits." How does a federal district court in one part of the country have jurisdiction over someone who intentionally does no business in that part of the country?

My idea was not to do business in any jurisdiction whose "juries tend to automatically side with plaintiffs in patent suits." How does a federal district court in one part of the country have jurisdiction over someone who intentionally does no business in that part of the country?

So, your question answers itself. Like it or not, Indiana and Michigan and Alaska and Texas are not different countries, they are parts of one country.

Making commercial law more uniform was a core aspect of the 3 radical overhauls of US national legal identity: the Revolution, the Constitution, and the Civil War. The period leading up to the Civil War with its dysfunctional legal treatment of slaves can be seen as a demonstration of the intrinsic problems with letting different jurisdictions define the sc

Like it or not, Indiana and Michigan and Alaska and Texas are not different countries

I am aware that Indiana and Michigan and Alaska and Texas are not different countries. But as I understand it, if I do no willful business in Texas, the district courts of Texas lack personal jurisdiction [wikipedia.org], and I can have the suit moved to a different venue whose juries don't always find in favor of a patent holder.

Like it or not, Indiana and Michigan and Alaska and Texas are not different countries

I am aware that Indiana and Michigan and Alaska and Texas are not different countries. But as I understand it, if I do no willful business in Texas, the district courts of Texas lack personal jurisdiction [wikipedia.org], and I can have the suit moved to a different venue whose juries don't always find in favor of a patent holder.

Well, I am not a lawyer, but as I understand it, you're wrong. Well, mostly. It's a lot more complicated than you're making it out to be... so, I guess you're technically right - but in practice, absolutely wrong.

So how do I work around it without going into cryogenic stasis for 20 years while the patents expire?

What a stupid question. Why not ask "How do I get around this annoying law-of-physics" or "How do I become badass like keanu reeves?". You're not capable of doing either, because you don't realistically have the power to do any of that. It's out of your reach, and complaining and whining isn't going to help. Neither is voting in right-wing, crazy-ass, uninformed politicians. Which you americans seem to do every 8-12 years...

If software patents cannot be worked around within the United States, the only remaining option is to leave the United States. Have you any tips for United States citizens on qualifying for a job (and hence a work visa) in what you appear to call "the civilized world"?

If software patents cannot be worked around within the United States, the only remaining option is to leave the United States. Have you any tips for United States citizens on qualifying for a job (and hence a work visa) in what you appear to call "the civilized world"?

Heh, couldn't string two thoughts together into a single post? Or did this brilliant response come to you after you'd hit the submit button?

But no, I have no advice for you getting out of the states. I'm happy with you living down there, making car parts and working at mcdonalds and paying a disproportionate amount of tax so that big corporations can get huge tax breaks and exploit everyone not intelligent enough to get an education, some decent skills and leave.

Apple has hundreds of millions of customers. They just got dinged for about 1 hour of their net earnings (or about 15 minutes of their gross revenue) to cover their liability in this case. It sucks that they have to bother, but they are arguably the juiciest target for such cases these days and it's costing them a tiny piece of their huge gushing flood of cash. Venue selection only really works for patent trolls suing very large companies

Like it or not, Indiana and Michigan and Alaska and Texas are not different countries

I am aware that Indiana and Michigan and Alaska and Texas are not different countries. But as I understand it, if I do no willful business in Texas, the district courts of Texas lack personal jurisdiction [wikipedia.org], and I can have the suit moved to a different venue whose juries don't always find in favor of a patent holder.

Well, let's start by staying factual: EDTX juries do not always find in favor of patent holders. They just lean that way more than most other places, and the docket is less clogged there (or at least it used to be... ) than in many other places.

But your comparison to a case against you in a state district court is radically different than the case at hand, and is tangential to your original suggestion about the scope of patent decisions. Patent cases have their own particularly well-defined (and relative

Making commercial law more uniform was a core aspect of the 3 radical overhauls of US national legal identity: the Revolution, the Constitution, and the Civil War.

You do realize that the driving push for the settlement of america was a radical overhaul in commercial law as related to personal legal identity?
You know that the main reason for the introduction of the printing press was a radical overhaul of commercial law?
You know that the war in iraq (both of them) were fundamentally based on commercial law?
gawd... oversimplifying much?

Not really.

The Revolution was primarily a response to the maze of taxes and trade rules that the British imposed on the American Colonies and their other overseas territories.

What we call "The" Constitution was a second try, after the Articles of Confederation proved that letting the States regulate their own commerce meant 13 little protectionist hells. The process leading to the writing of The Constitution started with a couple of small meetings trying to work out commercial conflicts between the stat

CAVEAT: I AM NOT A LAWYER AND TREATING MY WORDS AS LEGAL ADVICE WOULD BE INSANE

Patent cases are Federal cases

I agree with this, except that the decisions of the Court of Appeals of one circuit aren't necessarily binding on another circuit.

True, and in some circumstances a decision only applies to a specific judicial district. However, the sorts of cases where decisions only apply to a particular district or circuit are usually involving questions of law, rather than questions of fact. Questions of fact in civil cases such as patent cases are almost never subject to serious appeals. It would be unworkable to require plaintiffs to prove that a defendant violated

But if you sit back and read that slowly it describes to me, in an abstract way, exactly what is wrong with the patent system. A patent on listing something? Really? I just don't see how it furthers the arts and science in our society.

If an EU manufacturer sells a physical device containing a copy of patented software to a customer in the US, the patent holder can (and often does successfully) request that the shipment get stopped at the US border.

So, you ship physical devices that don't have any software installed on them, and customers are free to download the software from anywhere via the Internet.

If a company recommends a source of infringing software, it induces infringement. If a company fails to recommend a source of necessary software, it has failed to fulfill an implied warranty of merchantability.

Could you not just sell a EU and US version of your product, that conveniently can run the same software, but sold with a different feature set? If the user chooses to download the EU version of the software with it's naughty patented playlists and rudimentary data structures then that's their problem.

Could you not just sell a EU and US version of your product, that conveniently can run the same software, but sold with a different feature set?

Playback for three major codecs (MP3, WMA, AAC) is patented, and I know of no store that sells Vorbis downloads of major label recordings. So if even the most basic features are patented, what would the US version be capable of? If nothing, then the manufacturer has failed to fulfill an implied warranty of merchantability.

But we aren't speaking about physical goods, but software. Just look at Ubuntu, they're located in South-Africa, so they don't give a shit about the mpeg* software patents. All they asl is that if you don't have licenses for the patents then click cancel. You can bet most US users don't have licenses and still click "ok".On the other hand Red Hat doesn't host codecs in their repository, so the media players they ship won't work out of the box; I spent quite a bit of time getting them work, but I just gave u

If worse came to worst, the patent holders could sue any U.S.-based mirror that includes the patented parts of Ubuntu. Or they could sue Canonical for not adding a geolocation feature to the default install of software-center that discovers whether a license is required at the place of installation.

Americans will have to realize that if they don't take a stand and vote for sensible politicians, then their own qualities of life will suffer. I have no sympathy for them. In a democracy, there's no one to blame for a bad government than the people that voted for them. Of course, whether America really is a democracy or a 'free country' is an open question.

Of course, whether America really is a democracy or a 'free country' is an open question.

On paper it is, but in practice it isn't. Any candidate for U.S. federal office not approved by the movie studios gets no positive coverage on TV news or other news outlets with the same corporate parent as a movie studio.

Yes, the EU has software patents, they just don't call them that. You get them in through mechanisms that looked to me (a non-lawyer) kind of like US business method patents, but that's too much of a simplification. When you're interviewing new legal firms, have them talk you through their process for European software patents. It's not that complicated, and only a little more expensive than the US. It's been a couple years, but I think the numbers

I have zero sympathy for these tech companies. Apple, MS, Sony, all of them troll those waters, and sue each other as often as they can. The actually seem to want to protect this and continue this practice. So when one of the big guys that file 1000's of these things each and every YEAR, actually get boned by some little troll somewhere, I can't exactly get too worked up about it. They built the house, they get to live in it.

Exactly. Large companies have been assembling software and process patent portfolios for years, either to threaten their competitors or to defend (via countersuit) against patent claims from competitors. But the landscape changes completely when trolls with nothing to lose can sue based on some patent they picked up for a few bucks. Hey, big companies, wake up and smell the coffee: your strategy just doesn't make sense any more.

So ratchet up the pain, trolls. Go for it! I call for more pain. "Pain, Captain." Intense pain. The faster big tech companies wake up to a dismal future of slow death, the faster they'll wake up their trained congresscritters to invalidate the whole ugly, stinking mess. Guys, I'm sorry that your billion-dollar patent portfolio suddenly becomes a zero-value patent portfolio; but it's either that, or you can have your lifeblood sucked out by trolls.

And, let's not forget that the rest of the world (ahem China ahem) will blithely ignore all of this nonsense. Because their engineers are unencumbered by legions of lawyers, they will innovate us into the Stone Age. I hate to be melodramatic, but this is a national security issue for the USA. Software patents will sink us. They really will.

Look at what happened to the small aircraft industry in the USA. It has completely vanished. No smaller-than-huge company can survive a law suit anymore. Just one stupid "cat in the oven" suit can completely ruin a company and deter all the others in the field. In the end, it is only the big companies that survive.

.. Apple has been also doing its share of patent trolling, eh? Granted, they do produce some pretty functional and shiny hardware, fully plug and play, but they are not saints and they do employ armies of lawyers for the sole purpose of "Sued you! Now your shit is mine!"

Zoom out a little bit, and both of them (Apple and Personal Audio LLC) seem like trolls fighting over something that is not theirs. Playlists? Seriously?

The generally accepted definition of "patent troll" is a company that doesn't produce any products and whose revenue is entirely from licensing and litigation. You may not like what companies like Sony and Apple do with their patents, but they are not patent trolls.

...once you make a product, it's more like a "legalized racketeering".
e.g. MS is busy hitting-up android phone makers with licensing deals/royalties for every device made. But if the license windows phone, they will give you a break... That's *so* much better ^_^
The new patent war will let big companies trade blows, and keep new competitors from emerging by making sure that you can't cross the street without "infringing" upon something (or at least being accused of it). If you can't afford to fight t

I can't remember the term for it, but isn't there a patent defence if the patent holder intentionally delays attempting to enforce a patent to maximise damages that invalidates the patent?

No, you're only prevented from receiving damages for the time after you became aware of the infringement. If your patent is granted in 2000, someone starts infringing that patent in 2002, you become aware of the infringement in 2004, and you file a lawsuit in 2011, you're only entitled to damages for 2002-2004.

Seems like a lot of people would try to play games with the date of first awareness. Perhaps by terming it "suspicion" in 2004 but requiring a lengthy (and expensive, of course) legal review before the infringement could be confirmed. Thus they don't become "aware" of the infringement until, say, 2009 in your example, for an extra five years of damages.

How could they justify that? "Your honor, we were simply doing all necessary due diligence to ensure that we were not bringing a frivolous lawsuit befor

patent law is killing infotech innovation. i recommend folks check out Connections, a wonderful television series from PBS where the lineage of one invention to the next is traced, sometimes in surprising ways. lawyers suck, but patent lawyers are especially damn-worthy.

Why don't they just make it so if you have a patent but no product on the market using the patent, then you can't prosecute someone that gets to market first with it?
Give them a period of 1 year buffer to get to market over their competitors to secure the patent.

I was just wondering something. If you specifically were to put terms in your EULA that prohibits the use of the software if you are in East Texas, would you then be able to (most likely) successfully argue that East Texas is not the appropriate venue if you are sued for patent infringement?

The patent was filed in 1995, long before iTunes et al. existed, before most people even knew what an MP3 was.

The patent is truly innovative (for 1995).

The fact that it's only being enforced now doesn't necessarily mean they're patent trolls. It probably means that the patent sat forgotten in some large portfolio, unused for a long time, until these guys bought up a bundle for cheap and re-discovered this one.

The patent isn't really very innovative. Most of what's covered in the first patent is simply the exact same control scheme available on CD players at that time (skip forward, back, change the order of tracks) except with digital audio files on a computer. I don't know if it should fail for prior art, but it should definitely fail for obviousness. Even worse is the fact that they're not really patenting a particular invention, they're patenting the very idea of skipping forwards and backwards in a list o

Do any of them suddenly have new cars, bass boats, or houses that seem rather beyond their incomes? HAS ANYONE LOOKED? Hell, I'd be curious if the area around this cash register in the form of a federal courthouse is seeing an inexplicable boom in new residents.

Rule in favor of the troll, and award $1 in damages. Since they won, they can't appeal the verdict, and the loser will gladly pay $1 to be done with it. Do that a few times, and the patent trolls will find it's not a viable business model anymore.